UC Irvine Professor, Denied Tenure, Calls It a Form of Racism

A black UC Irvine professor has leveled charges of “institutional racism� against fellow faculty members who declined to recommend him for tenure.

Larry Hogue, 35, an assistant professor of English and comparative literature for the past eight years, alleges that it was his emphasis on teaching black literature in an all-white department that led to a two-year tenure review controversy.

A final decision is expected “momentarily,� a UCI spokesman said. Not receiving tenure is tantamount to dismissal.

Criticized Research

Hogue said faculty members in his department evaluated him negatively in 1986, criticizing his research for using European theories to analyze black literature and calling his teaching “not spectacular.� Hogue contested the evaluation as an “institutional kind of racism. Those things that are not white are not deemed worthy.�

Hogue said that UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason reviewed the case and concluded that the review was flawed but because of a procedural error and not because of racial discrimination. Peltason then sent Hogue’s first tenure application back to be redone.

The complex tenure process involves eight steps of review and recommendations, starting with the faculty member’s department, winding through an ad hoc review committee, an academic personnel committee, stopping for letters of support from outside scholars, and ending with the chancellor.

Basic criteria used are: “superior intellectual attainment as evidenced both in teaching and in research or other creative achievements,� according to the UC academic personnel manual.

Hogue claims that professors in his department intentionally violated the procedures in his original review. “Doing it over,� he said, “would allow him (the chancellor) to deny me tenure with his hands clean.�

Hogue said he did not receive a recommendation from his department the second time around.

Peltason was unavailable for comment.

Quality of research is a key criteria for recommending tenure in the English department, and “the particular area of a person’s research is not in question,� said Stephen Barney, acting chairman of the department of English and comparative literature. University rules prevented him from commenting on personnel matters, Barney said.

Members of the Black Student Union are petitioning Peltason to award Hogue tenure despite his department’s rejection.

“We want (Peltason) to know it will be a great loss,� said La Quetta Bush, an anthropology senior and executive coordinator of the Black Student Union. “We don’t have many black faculty and staff here, and when one is threatened to leave, it takes away black role models we see and takes away from the diversity of the staff.�

Of UCI’s approximately 900 faculty members, 626 have tenure or are “tenure track�--full-time faculty headed for tenure evaluation. Of those, 10, or .016%, are black.

In the nine-campus UC system, blacks represent 1.7% of all tenured, full-time faculty, as compared to 7.5% of the state’s population, according to UC statisticians. Latinos represent 2.95% of tenured faculty, Asians 5.6% and American Indians .2%

Recruiting and retaining black faculty is now “our most acute problem,� said Michele Zak, director of the UC’s faculty development and affirmative action program. “We’re taking a very active stance to try and solve the problem.�

Aid Program

At the postgraduate level, a pre-tenure program called Faculty Development Program awards grants to minorities and women to give them time and money to do research to help make them eligible for tenure, Zak said.

Hogue said he took a quarter’s leave, using the program to work on his book, “Discourse and the Other: The Production of the Afro American Text,� published by Duke University Press in 1986. He said he also took a year’s leave on a Ford Foundation grant to finish the book.

“Those were attempts by the system to help and it did,� he said. “The fact that the department did not recommend tenure has to do with something else.�

Hogue, who holds a Ph.D in modern thought and literature from Stanford University, said he was hired by UCI in 1980 as an Americanist to teach American literature.

“To me, black literature is American literature,� he said. “They had a definition of American literature that was white literature.�

When outside scholars recruited for his tenure review evaluated his work as “at the forefront of Afro American studies,� department members “backed away and said we are not going to judge him by those standards, but by American lit standards,� Hogue said.

Charges ‘Sidestepping’

“That was their way of sidestepping where I ranked among Afro American scholars.�

He said his articles have appeared in MELES Journal, a journal of ethnic studies, and Studies of Black American Literature. He said Yale University literary critic Harold Bloom is including an article of his in a volume on Alice Walker, author of “The Color Purple.�

Black faculty, staff and students are concerned over decreasing numbers of black faculty on campus, said Thomas Parham, a black UCI staff member who holds a Ph.D in psychology and directs the Career Planning and Placement Center. In the last two years, two black faculty members died and were not replaced, he said.

“The question of whether the particular faculty member meets the prerequisites for tenure is a whole other issue and only one which can be decided by the tenure committee,� he said, adding that he was unfamiliar with Hogue’s case.

Parham called tenure “an inhumane professional process� for all faculty members because of its ambiguity, but it is worse for blacks, he contended. Many specialize in ethnic-oriented research, which is not always respected by predominantly white institutions, he said. Moreover, blacks have more constraints on their time by having to represent their race on various committees and serve as mentors for black students, he added.

“UCI’s dilemma is faced by other predominantly white institutions across the country,� he said. “They say they have trouble attracting and finding qualified� minorities, he said. “I would contend there are more out there than you think. Even if they are difficult to find, it makes no sense to have a world-class institution that couldn’t train its own.�